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With the Russian flag planting last monthn and Canada promising to build military bases, the race for the Arctic has begun in earnest. Some of the better news articles can be found below. A most intriguing suggestion by my Energy Law students is that the Arctic Circle indigenous peoples, who currently have six non-voting participants in the Arctic Council, could seek recognition as a sovereign nation -- and assert claims against all of the current claimants. That would certainly change the terms of debate!

While this blog was recently named as a favorite on Blog Day by the Spanish language blog Bioterra (Bioterra blog day list), I remain concerned that only the Northern hemisphere appears to find the blog useful, judging by the slim usage in terms of visits from south of the equator. What can I do to provide more relevant information for you?

John Dernback just posted the Vermont decision to the ABA climate change list. I thought I'd go read it before my energy class and then I realized that it is 244 pages long. Here's the opinion vermont_decision.pdf and here's the
table of contents:

More Good News for the Ozone Layer

By Phil BerardelliScienceNOW Daily News11 September 2007

The nations of the world might be deadlocked over what to do about
greenhouse gases, but one important agreement reached 20 years ago
seems to have produced tangible benefits for the atmosphere and Earth's
inhabitants. Researchers tracking one of the chemicals that is most
destructive to the ozone layer have found that its levels peaked in the
early 1990s and have been declining steadily ever since. The finding
reinforces conclusions that Earth's ozone layer is slowly returning to
health.

Atmospheric concentrations of ozone block up to 99% of the cancer- and
mutation-causing solar radiation. The gas forms when ultraviolet (UV)
light strikes and splits oxygen molecules. The resulting free oxygen
atoms quickly combine with other oxygen molecules to form ozone, or O3.
And when more oxygen atoms are freed by UV light striking ozone
molecules, they likewise quickly rebond into ozone. This cycle had been
occurring for more than a billion years, until humans began
manufacturing chemicals that rose into the atmosphere and started
ripping apart ozone in a way that prevented it from easily
reconstituting. In 1987, recognizing the dangers to ozone and to the
biosphere from the buildup of those chemicals, 191 nations signed the
Montreal Protocol that initially limited and then banned the
manufacture of ozone-destroying molecules.

The changes in the ozone layer have been slow but steady ever since.
Scientists charged with monitoring the protective layer's health
reported earlier this year that the primary type of ozone-destroying
chemicals--known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)--had been declining
since the mid-1990s (ScienceNOW,
5 March 2007). Now, two Arizona astronomers have analyzed data on
hydrogen chloride (HCl) concentrations over the past 35 years. HCl,
which comes from volcanoes and the breakdown of chemicals used to make
plastics, rubber, and semiconductors, packs nearly as much
ozone-destroying potential as CFCs, and its use was restricted by the
Montreal Protocol. Utilizing instruments at the Kitt Peak National
Observatory in Arizona, Lloyd Wallace of the National Optical Astronomy
Observatories and William Livingston of the National Solar Observatory,
both in Tucson, found that HCl levels had fallen by an average of about
1.8% per year since 1993. This compares with an average annual increase
of 5.7% from 1971 to 1993, the authors report in the August issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

The findings show that "there is indeed good evidence that the chlorine
loading in the atmosphere is going down as a result of the Montreal
Protocol," says atmospheric chemist Christopher Cantrell of the
National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. That
doesn't mean the ozone layer is out of the woods, however, he says. The
observations don't "tell us about the status of bromine levels,"
Cantrell says. Bromine is rarer in the atmosphere but is "much more
effective at destroying ozone." Nevertheless, he says, "I think most
everyone agrees that we should see [full ozone layer] recovery
eventually," although probably not for at least 50 more years.

My Climate Change and Energy Law class discussed peak oil yesterday, discussing the effect of the OPEC quotas and sketchy information from OPEC countries about reserves on our ability to predict or identify when oil production peaks -- and about the trajectory of oil prices we can expect when oil does peak. That discussion came just in time for today's news: crude oil futures have now passed the $ 80 level for the first time:

SAN
FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures climbed into uncharted
territory Wednesday, peaking above $80 a barrel and closing at a record
high just below that level after U.S. government data showed that crude
supplies dropped more than 7 million barrels and motor gasoline
inventories fell a sixth week in a row.

Crude oil for October delivery climbed as high as $80.05 a barrel in
regular trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That's the highest
level a front-month contract has ever reached on the exchange. The
previous record was $78.70 from the regular trading session on Aug. 1.

The contract finished the session at $79.91 a barrel, up 2.2%, or $1.68.

The data were a "big shock to the oil market," said John Person,
president of NationalFutures.com. The "major draw in inventories is not
indicative of a slowing economy."

"Consumers are still soaking up supplies rather than conserving and
this is forcing refineries to increase production,"

"The market is painfully getting too pricy as we tap closer
to the $80 level."

<>

U.S. crude supplies
dropped a third week, down 7.1 million barrels to 322.6 million, for
the week ended Sept. 7, the Energy Department reported early Wednesday. Supplies have now
dropped 14.5 million barrels from the mid-August level, though they're
still up about 1.4% from a year ago, the data showed.

>
<>

The American Petroleum
Institute confirmed the decline, pegged the size of it at 5.2 million
barrels for crude inventories. Its total for the week stood at 321.5
million.

Motor gasoline supplies
fell a sixth straight week, down 700,000 barrels at 190.4 million in
the latest week, the Energy Department said. They've tallied a decline
of 14.3 million from the late July level.

>
<>

In contrast, the API
posted an increase in the fuels supplies. They were up 3.3 million
barrels in the latest week, at 200.2 million....The decline in gasoline
supplies came as U.S. refinery utilization fell to 90.5% of capacity
from 92.1% a week ago, the Energy Department data showed.

>

October reformulated
gasoline closed higher by 3.49 cents at $2.016 a gallon, while October
heating oil added 3.64 cents to finish at a record high of $2.2191 a
gallon.

OPEC takes action

<>

On Tuesday, crude-oil futures climbed even after the Organization of
the Petroleum Exporting Countries decided to raise its daily output by
500,000 barrels per day, starting Nov. 1. OPEC said its new production target for 10 of its 12 members would be
27.2 million barrels per day. Its previous target was 25.8 million.

>
<>

Prices have reached a record "without an actual supply disruption from
a major hurricane weather event," said Person. And even "with an
official increase in OPEC's production quota, the market did not
flinch," he said. "This shows just how strong the underlying
fundamentals are with the supply/demand outlook."

><>

"To add more fuel to
the fire, if the Fed does actually lower interest rates at next week's
meeting this, in turn, could further stimulate the economy and heat up
the demand for gasoline," he said.And "with the prospects
for a colder winter, heating oil demand will certainly put pressure on
the refineries to purchase more crude oil, thus keeping prices above
the $75 for the next month," he predicted.

>

"The uncertainty about the economy is one of the main focuses of the
oil market," Flynn said. "It seems that the oil market is starting to
bet that we might not see as big of a demand drop as feared."

Italian Virus Outbreak May Portend Global Spread

By Martin EnserinkScienceNOW Daily News7 September 2007

Another pathogen has jumped its traditional boundaries to begin what
some fear is a march around the globe. This time the invader is a virus
that causes chikungunya, a crippling and painful disease until now
found only in the tropics. This summer, it sickened more than 160
people in and around two small villages in Italy. Chikungunya is
transmitted by the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus),
a species that is taking the world by storm, and medical entomologists
worry that the disease has the potential to follow the insect.
Chikungunya is rarely fatal but can cause severe fevers, headaches, fatigue, nausea, and muscle and joint pains.

Clinical & Research News

Long-Term Temperature Trends May Affect Suicide Rates

Joan Arehart-Treichel

Researchers suggest possible causes of an apparent relationshipin
England and Wales between increased temperatures and suiciderates.

There is little doubt that hot weather can adversely affectpeople's
health. During periods of sizzling temperatures, thereis a surge in the
hospital admissions of patients with heat-relatedconditions and deaths due to
various causes. Severely mentallyill patients are at an even greater danger
of dying during brutaltemperatures than the general population is, according
to areport in the August 1998 Psychiatric Services, by Nigel Bark,
M.D.,of the Bronx Psychiatric Center in the Bronx, N.Y.

Now it looks as though heat may have an impact on suicides aswell, a study
published in the August British Journal of Psychiatryhas found. It
was headed by Lisa Page, M.D., a clinical lecturerand National Institutes of
Health research fellow at the Instituteof Psychiatry at King's College
London.

Page and her colleagues investigated whether there was any relationship
from1993 to 2003 between daily suicide counts in England and Walesand daily
temperatures. They took various factors into accountthat might have skewed
results, including year of death, monthof death, day of the week, public
holidays, and hours of daylight.

They found an association. Above 18 degrees Celsius (64 degrees
Fahrenheit),there was strong evidence for a small but significant effectof
increasing temperature on all suicides, but especially onviolent ones. In
fact, suicides increased by 42 percent duringthe July 29 to August 3, 1995,
heat wave, compared with whatwas expected for that time of year. This 42
percent was wellin excess of the 11 percent increase in all-cause mortality
reportedfor the same period.

Concluded Page and her colleagues: "There is increased riskof
suicide during hot weather.... This is the first time thatdeath from suicide
has been shown to be contributing to theknown increase in all-cause mortality
at higher temperatures."

The ways in which high temperatures might contribute to suicidesremain to
be determined, though. The neurotransmitter serotoninmight be implicated,
Page speculated during an interview, since"serotonin levels are known
to vary cyclically around the year,with low levels in the summer months.
Also, postmortem studieshave shown that people who commit suicide are more
likely tohave low levels of central serotonin.... However, I know ofno
evidence to support the idea that serotonin levels respondquickly to
increases in temperature, which is what would haveto be the case for this to
be a realistic explanation for ourfindings."

Nonetheless, Page and her colleagues believe that the putativeimpact of
hot weather on suicidal behavior will become evengreater as globalwarming
continues.

"I am not sure that these results have huge implications for
psychiatrists,"Page admitted. "The effect of temperature on
suicide is smallwhen considering any one individual patient and when
contrastedwith traditional (individual level) risk factors such as male
gender,previous self-harm, or major mental illness."

Nonetheless, she does believe that the results have public health
implicationsand that countries' health-service plans for heat waves should
perhapsaddress suicide prevention.

"Those with mental illness are highlighted as an at-risk groupin
England's heat-wave plan," she said, "although this is becauseof
their increased susceptibility to heat stroke rather thanfor suicide
prevention."

Interestingly, in charting the relationship between daily suicidecounts
and daily temperatures over the course of a decade, Pageand her colleagues
could not find any peak in suicides duringthe spring and summer months, as
have a number of researchersin the past. One reason, she said, may be because
"temperaturehas a short-term, that is, near-immediate, effect on
suicidethat may well not be reflected if monthly patterns are
inspected."

Another possible explanation is that high temperatures do notplay any role
in the spring-summer suicide peak. A 2003 studyfound that the hours of bright
sunlight a day, not temperature,explained the peak in suicides during
Australia's spring andsummer (Psychiatric News, June 20, 2003).

The study was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health,the
Wellcome Trust, and the European Commission Directorate-Generalfor Health and
Consumer Protection for the EuroHEAT project.

Judge Orders Bush Administration to Issue Climate Change Reports

A
federal judge ordered President Bush's administration to issue two
scientific reports on global warming, siding with environmentalists who
sued the White House for failing to produce the documents.

U.S. District Court Judge Saundra Armstrong ruled Tuesday that the
Bush administration had violated a 1990 law when it failed to meet
deadlines for an updated U.S. climate change research plan and impact
assessment.

Armstrong set a March 1 deadline for the White House to issue the
research plan, which is meant to guide federal research on climate
change. Federal law calls for an updated plan every three years, she
said. The last one was issued in 2003.

The judge set a May 31 deadline to produce a national assessment
containing the most recent scientific data on global warming and its
projected effects on the country's environment, economy and public
health. The government is required to complete a national assessment
every four years, the judge ruled. The last one was issued by the
Clinton administration in 2000.

The administration had claimed that it had discretion over how and
when it produced the reports — an argument the judge rejected Tuesday.

"The defendants are wrong," Armstrong wrote in the 38-page ruling.
"Congress has conferred no discretion upon the defendants as to when
they will issue revised Research Plans and National Assessments."

"It's a huge victory holding the administration accountable for its
attempts to suppress science," said Kassie Siegel, an attorney for the
Center for Biological Diversity, one of the plaintiffs that filed suit
in Oakland federal court in November.

Bush administration officials were still reviewing the ruling
Tuesday and could not comment on it directly, said Kristin Scuderi, a
spokeswoman for the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy, which
was named in the lawsuit.

But the administration is complying with the law, Scuderi said. The
U.S. Climate Change Science Program is working on 21 separate reports
on global warming's projected effects on the U.S and has started to
prepare a new research plan, she said

AND HERE"S THE WORD FROM THE SENATE MINORITY:

Breaking: Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory

Last week in his blog post, New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears, on the Inhofe EPW Press Blog, Marc
Morano cited a July 2007 review of 539 abstracts in peer-reviewed
scientific journals from 2004 through 2007 that found that climate
science continues to shift toward the views of global warming skeptics.

Today, Michael Asher provides more details about this new survey in his blog post, Survey: Less Than Half Of All Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory. Asher writes that the study has been submitted for publication in the journal Energy and Environment.

DAILYTECH

SURVEY: LESS THAN
HALF OF ALL PUBLISHED SCIENTISTS ENDORSE GLOBAL WARMING THEORY;
COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY OF PUBLISHED CLIMATE RESEARCH REVEALS CHANGING
VIEWPOINTS

Michael Asher

August 29, 2007 11:07 AM

In 2004, history professor
Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change.
Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science
database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the
"consensus view," defined as humans were having at least some effect on
global climate change. Oreskes' work has been repeatedly cited, but as
some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are
becoming somewhat dated.

Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this
research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he
examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results
have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit
endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement
(accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises
to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus
outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down
definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting
that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require
any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of
all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

These changing viewpoints represent the advances in climate science
over the past decade. While today we are even more certain the earth is
warming, we are less certain about the root causes. More importantly,
research has shown us that -- whatever the cause may be -- the amount
of warming is unlikely to cause any great calamity for mankind or the
planet itself.

Schulte's survey contradicts the United Nation IPCC's Fourth Assessment
Report (2007), which gave a figure of "90% likely" man was having an
impact on world temperatures. But does the IPCC represent a consensus
view of world scientists? Despite media claims of "thousands of
scientists" involved in the report, the actual text is written by a
much smaller number of "lead authors." The introductory "Summary for
Policymakers" -- the only portion usually quoted in the media -- is
written not by scientists at all, but by politicians, and approved,
word-by-word, by political representatives from member nations. By IPCC
policy, the individual report chapters -- the only text actually
written by scientists -- are edited to "ensure compliance" with the
summary, which is typically published months before the actual report
itself.

By contrast, the ISI Web of Science database covers 8,700 journals and
publications, including every leading scientific journal in the world.